At the Revolution’s Fore

Producer Cameron Mackintosh is planted smack in front of a set model for “The Witches of Eastwick,” his new musical set to open in London next summer. On either side of him stand members of the show’s creative team, and he has plenty of questions for them: How much will all those fancy lights cost? Where will the dancers dance in that diner scene? What’s the emotional beat of that big production number, and how will they get the audience to settle down afterward?

Perhaps the most successful theater producer in the world, Mackintosh is the man who launched “Cats” and three more of the most popular musicals of our time--”The Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “Miss Saigon.” Currently between 30 and 40 productions of his shows are running worldwide.

Perched on the edge of his seat, talking about his shows as others might talk about their children, the British impresario looks considerably younger than his 53 years.

You need sensible shoes to keep up with Mackintosh. The busy producer, who was knighted in 1996, has his “Witches of Eastwick” team meeting in one office, a reporter in another and a photographer set to snap pictures of him in the conference room. Within five minutes of the last photograph, Mackintosh is out the door, an assistant at his elbow giving him the address for his next stop, a rehearsal for his newest Broadway show. It is Stephen Sondheim’s “Putting It Together,” with Carol Burnett, seen last season at the Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum.

CTG head Gordon Davidson has two more Mackintosh musicals on the Ahmanson Theatre roster this season. Opening tonight is “Les Miserables,” the 1987 Tony Award-winning musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic tale of a good-hearted fugitive and his relentless pursuer. And the producer’s third version of “Martin Guerre” recently opened at Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, heading for Los Angeles for a Feb. 23 opening, en route to Broadway.

Davidson calls Mackintosh “a tough but fair--and maybe even generous--businessman” and says he is already talking with him about future shows. Calendar talked with Mackintosh at his New York office:

*

Question: How did you get into this producing business in the first place? Were you hooked by the stage as a child?

Mackintosh: I’d been dragged to see the musical “Salad Days” just before my eighth birthday. People singing and dancing seemed sissy to me, but of course I was captivated. So on my eighth birthday, I wanted to go back and see it again. At that point, I had also discovered that the composer was Julian Slade, who was actually playing the piano in the pit. At the end of the show, I just marched down the aisle and introduced myself, my mother and aunt trailing behind me. He then took me backstage and showed me how everything worked.

I’ve always called it my “road to Damascus moment,” when I suddenly realized that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I saw how scenery came in and out, and I wanted to put things like that together. By the time I was 10, I’d worked out that the person in charge was called a producer.

*

Q: What’s the best part of being a producer?

Mackintosh: One of the best parts is finding an original piece of material which is mostly right or you know it will be, and it sounds different. You go, “Oh my God,” and it’s still not disappointing you on the sixth or seventh number. Even if you hit a bum one, you know it’s going to come back. And you go, “This is something special,” which I absolutely remember were my feelings with “Les Miserables.”

*

Q: According to your press release, “Les Miserables” has already played in Los Angeles several times and been seen by more than 1 million people here. Why bring it back?

Mackintosh: Throughout the country, it’s gone back to cities several times with no diminishing of power. We haven’t been to Los Angeles in quite a long time. [It was last seen here in Long Beach in 1996.] Gordon Davidson and I were chatting, and he said one place it hasn’t gone is the Ahmanson. It just worked out perfectly that the millennium slot was the right one for him and for us.

*

Q: With 40 million tickets sold worldwide, and a global box office of more than $1.8 billion, “Les Miserables” is clearly doing something right. How do you explain its popularity?

Mackintosh: Look, there are several reasons. The first is it’s actually a terrific musical. [Co-creators] Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg have gone to the heart of the story, and it’s based on a rattling good tale, probably the best source material that a musical ever had. It’s about the supremacy of the human spirit, and because it’s written by someone as brilliant as Hugo, contemporary audiences of all ages have empathy with the characters. They’re timeless. In any society, you recognize a Javert or Thenardier or Eponine.

People forget that Hugo was the most populist writer of his time. He and Dickens were out to make a buck. When the novel first came out in France, it didn’t get good reviews, but there were queues in the street. The American Civil War was on within two years of it being published, and I discovered when we opened the show in Washington, so many of Robert E. Lee’s troops had a copy of this hot new book that they were nicknamed “Lee’s Miserables.” It had that kind of immediate effect.

*

Q: Actually, how do you explain the success of all your shows? Where do those audiences come from?

Mackintosh: I think the popularity of the big musicals has definitely caused a sort of nuclear reaction among audiences. We had four great big hits within a decade--”Cats,” “Les Miz,” “Phantom” and “Miss Saigon.” They all started going around the world, and it fueled a huge appetite.

The trouble is, of course, that everyone thought that once you had four of these, you could keep churning them out. But of course you can’t. It was absolutely a combination of luck and timing that they happened in such quick succession, because they’re all completely different from each other.

*

Q: How do you handle timing? How do you decide it’s the right time to open a new show, redo an old one or, in the case of “Les Miz,” bring back a blockbuster?

Mackintosh: I never do. God is the one that does the timing. You put the show together, and it does or doesn’t move on to the next stage. At times you’ll be disappointed. A very good example of that is [John Kander & Fred Ebb’s] musical “Chicago.” “Chicago” was not a huge hit when it opened 20 years ago. When this new version, which was first done just as a concert, became this terrific success onstage, everyone went, “What a timely, brilliant musical.”

Now that “Martin Guerre” opened in America, the background resonances are absolutely hitting a nerve. One reviewer said the religious background has the resonance of Kosovo. The whole topsy-turvy thing of Northern Ireland is back on the brink again. We’ve seen a spate of religious wars around the world in the last 12 months.

The central pivot of the story is this impossible love story, but nevertheless there are also these resonances. Believe me, it wasn’t something I aimed for. I just wanted to get the show right.

*

Q: You worked with Boublil and Schonberg so successfully on “Les Miz” and “Miss Saigon.” What’s made “Martin Guerre” such a challenge that it’s taken three versions?

Mackintosh: The one big difference between “Martin Guerre” and all the other shows is that it’s a true story and not one based on a book or film. It’s based on a true-life incident which for some reason immediately captured the imagination and went far beyond this little village of Artigat. Boublil and Schonberg are exceptional. That’s why I wanted to complete that journey with them and, in fact, to push them to complete the journey, which they did very willingly.

*

Q: How do you know when that journey is completed?

Mackintosh: We know bits of staging will get adjusted, as will the odd line here or there, but we just sense that there is no more for them to do in the storytelling. The music is exactly what is required. Often in a musical, if the music isn’t right, it’s because what the composer has to write about isn’t certain. The show is complete now, and it will have whatever life it’s meant to have. So far, it’s very encouraging.

*

Q: What keeps you interested?

Mackintosh: It is the authors that keep me going, if I think they’re special. I get 200 or 300 musical [proposals] a year. Most are terrible. Most are crap or derivative. What I look for is an original voice in the songs so they don’t sound like anyone else’s.

*

Q: Is that one reason to work with nonprofit theater? Because there’s so little material?

Mackintosh: Look, it isn’t the reason to do it. But the standards of the nonprofit theater and the standards of the good producer are not any different. We’re all looking for good material. My view is that when it’s appropriate to develop that material with nonprofit theater, one should do so. But only when it’s appropriate.

“Les Miz” is a very good example. Trevor Nunn and John Caird put that show together in a long rehearsal period at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Barbican in a way very similar to their “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.” But “Miss Saigon” at the Royal Shakespeare Company? Absolutely not. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.

*

Q: Let’s talk about the long haul, about persisting on a particular project.

Mackintosh: I’ve been around long enough to know it takes as long as it takes. You can’t force the creation of something. Sometimes hiatuses happen. For instance, we created “Putting It Together” in ’91 with Diana Rigg in Oxford. Then she was off making movies or whatever. We got the opportunity to do it at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York in 1993, and Julie Andrews miraculously agreed to do it. But because of her doing “Victor Victoria,” which we knew from the outset, she couldn’t move with the show. She suggested I consult with Carol Burnett, but Carol couldn’t do it then. We never found anyone else because we’d been rather spoiled. Then cut to several years later, and we did it with Carol at the Taper and now on Broadway.

*

Q: Where do you see the promise next for musical theater?

Mackintosh: It’s always coming out of new writing. The writing has always propelled theater forward, whether it’s been musicals or drama. You can never tell what people are going to write. Fifteen years ago, particularly over here [in the U.S.], the musical theater was moribund because there were hardly any new people coming into it. Now, people are realizing again that if you do get it right, you can have a great career. You don’t have to go to Hollywood. In fact, individuality in both movies and theater is actually what becomes successful.

*

Q: What’s next for you?

Mackintosh: We’re doing “Oliver!” in Toronto, and I’m sure it would be a success in America. But it’s a very big show. It’s as big as “Saigon.” The reason “Oliver!” doesn’t get done as a full-scale professional revival is because of the economics of the show, and we haven’t yet found a way of doing it here. I’m also still hoping to bring “Oklahoma!” to Broadway next season, for autumn 2000, if we can get a theater and sort out casting problems.

I’m also discussing a revival of “My Fair Lady” with Trevor Nunn at the National, but not until 2001. “My Fair Lady” is absolutely one of my favorites. It is certainly, other than the shows I’ve done, the one show in the world I wish I could have produced originally. To this day it still is perfect in music, book and lyrics.

Look, I don’t do that many shows. I really don’t. I happen to be very busy at the moment, but with the exception of “Witches of Eastwick,” it’s all material I’ve been working on for some time.

*

Q: You’ve spent most of your life producing musicals. What would you like to see happen in that arena?

Mackintosh: With all the new material, I’m always surprised at how many writers seem to write work that is based on stuff that hasn’t a really strong structure. I think that’s a very hard way to learn your craft. The timeless shows are the ones based on the best stories. That’s why “Show Boat” still gets done. That’s why Rodgers & Hammerstein survive generation after generation. Being talented isn’t enough. Knowing what to write about is the essential ingredient in being a successful writer.

*

“Les Miserables” at the Ahmanson Theatre, today through Feb. 12. Tuesday-Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. (except opening performance today at 4 p.m.). Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets $25 to $65 ($70 today). (213) 628-2772.